Blue Desire (6 page)

“Red!”
The scream came loud and clear from
across the room. Both
doms
turned to look, but Brett
couldn’t instantly figure out who was yelling. There was a slender blonde being
caned.
A big beautiful redhead being spanked.
And a short brunette being hit with a flogger.
Of the three,
the scene with the blonde looked the most dangerous, and he started heading
that way with Evan at his side, their gear forgotten. Brett was a dungeon
monitor, and it was part of his job to sort things out when someone used the
club safe word. He was thankful for Evan’s company.

The
man doing the caning was a little guy, but if Brett had to physically stop him,
then Evan could help take care of the sub. The safe word hadn’t stopped him as
he placed another red line on his sub’s butt.

“Red!
Red!
Red!”
This time Brett could
tell who was doing the screaming, and it was the brunette. Darren had gotten up
and sat back down when he saw Brett and Evan. Marty was heading over as well.
The
dom
with the flogger
held it at his left side, although Brett had seen him get one more lick in
after the first safe word. He was big and barrel-chested with a beer belly.
Brett had met him but didn’t know him well, and he tried to remember a name.
Archie?
Yeah, that was it. Archie could probably swing the
flogger pretty hard, although it wasn’t a heavy toy. From the way the girl had
been screaming, Brett had expected to see a braided cat or something, not a
deerskin flogger.

Marty
got there first, so Brett pulled up a few feet away. If the man respected
Marty’s authority, there wasn’t any need to threaten a physical confrontation.

“Give
me the flogger and untie her,” Marty said, clearly expecting to have his
directions followed.

“Get
me out of here,” said the girl. She was crying now, tears running down her
face. She was tied to bolts in the wall, spread-eagle, and wearing a black bra,
panties, and high heels. There was a black dress on the floor to her left.

“This
is like nothing,” said Archie. “She can’t safe word this. Look, it doesn’t even
leave a mark.” He pulled the flogger back as if he was going to swing it again
to demonstrate.

Marty
was on the right side of him. Brett was sure Archie was right about the flogger
not leaving a mark, but that wasn’t the point. The girl had used her safe word,
and Marty couldn’t possibly reach the man’s flogger hand. Brett stepped
forward, grabbed Archie’s wrist, and squeezed hard, maybe harder than he needed
to. Archie dropped the flogger. His right fist clenched, but rather than
swinging it, he yanked his left hand back. Brett let it go. The two men stared
at each other.
Go ahead. Make my day
.
Brett wanted to teach him a lesson.

“Evan,
help me get her down,” said Marty, in his usual calm voice. “Archie, if you
ever want to play here again, you’ll take a deep breath and take several steps
back.” Brett didn’t know if the words would work on Archie, but Marty’s
calmness helped Brett get his calm back. The man was out of line, and the girl
needed protecting, but no one had to get hurt. Or hurt worse. It was possible,
even with a light flogger, to do serious damage to a kidney if you hit wrong.

Marty
untied the girl’s right hand and ankle, and Evan stepped forward to undo the
other side. The girl wasn’t being verbal anymore, just sobbing. Archie clenched
his left hand into a fist. That was the one he’d been swinging the flogger
with, and that was the dangerous one. He was probably very left-hand dominant,
like Evan. Couldn’t
bring
himself to throw his first
punch with his right. And now the moment had passed. The
fist
remained clenched but not as tightly. “You interfering motherfucker.”

Any
words were a better outcome than a fight. Brett nodded, acknowledging the man’s
anger. Marty had given him instructions, and there was no reason to repeat
them. Now that Archie was starting to think, instead of react, he’d realize
that even if he was crazy enough to think he had a chance with Brett, he
couldn’t possibly take on Brett
and
Evan. Evan was a big tall guy. He used to be a professional baseball pitcher.
Brett knew he wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of a punch from Evan’s
left hand.

“I
don’t want to be hit,” the woman was saying in the background.

“You’re
not going to be hit,” said a woman whose soft voice Brett recognized as
belonging to Starlight, Evan’s submissive. In her vanilla life, Starlight was
Stella and a doctor of physical therapy. If the woman was hurt, she was in good
hands. “You’re okay now.”

“I
didn’t even hit her hard. Look at that flogger. It’s just a warm-up toy. Every
blow landed right on her bottom.
Right where it should.”
Archie was babbling now, his eyes pleading for understanding.

“Let’s
take a walk,” said Brett. He put an arm on Archie’s shoulder and guided him
away, waiting until they were a few steps distant before he started talking
again. Sometimes, the two people involved might benefit from talking about what
happened, but right now there’d only be an argument. Clearly, it had all gone
wrong, and clearly Archie had shown at least some care to make sure it didn’t,
but not enough. Brett could only guess at what happened, but he had a guess.

“Her first time with a flogger?”
Brett asked.

“Yeah.
Which is why I was
going real gentle.
”

Brett
nodded. He was glad he hadn’t had to punch Archie. He’d been out of line, but
he might be salvageable. “Did you tell her what you were going to do before you
tied her up?”

Archie
shook her head. “No.”

“She
may have some issues with being flogged that have nothing to do with you. Or
you might have missed and not realized it. I’m betting Starlight is finding out
right now. Your sub is being taken care of.”

“But
I want to be the one taking care of her.”

“You
lost that right when you didn’t honor her safe word. Doesn’t matter if you
think the safe word makes sense. When she says it, you have to stop.
Period.
Even if she’s safe wording you breathing on her
ear.”

Archie
frowned. “But then the sub is in control.”

“Yes.”

“But
isn’t the whole point that she doesn’t want to be in control?”

Brett
nodded. “It’s some of the point. But it’s not the whole point. And it ends when
she says red. She wanted to be back in control right then, and you had to let
her be.
Period.”

“So
what should I have done?” Archie asked. His voice was almost a whine now, but
Brett thought he honestly wanted the information. He didn’t seem very much like
a
dom
right now, but maybe
he’d get his confidence back.

“You
should have dropped the flogger on the floor and had her halfway untied by the
time we got there. And if you had, we would have watched, but not done
anything. Unless—”

“Unless
what?”

“Unless she kept saying her safe word.
It’s not about you
having power. It’s about her having power and choosing to give it to you—or
not. That’s why we sometimes call it power exchange.” It was an
oversimplification, and Brett knew it, but one couldn’t say much of anything
about BDSM in his experience without oversimplifying. “And when she says the
safe word, she’s reclaiming her power.”

Archie’s
face tightened. Brett didn’t expect a positive reaction right away, but maybe
he’d think about it in time. “So now what
do I
do?”
asked Archie.

“Do
you two live together?”

“Heck no.
Met on the Internet, thought we’d hook
up here. I’ve known her an hour.”

“You
wait. You talk to Marty. And then, if Marty lets you stay, you wait and see if
she wants to talk to you—if you want to talk to her. If not, probably best to
try with someone else some other evening and talk to her more thoroughly first
about what she wants and doesn’t want. Yeah, all that discussion means she’ll
be more in control. But if it goes well, and she trusts you, then she may give
you a little more power the next time. And there may be a next time.”

“Thanks,
Brett. I’ve got it from here.” Marty clapped him on the back as he came up from
behind him.

“Is
she okay?” Archie asked. After all the bluster and insistence he’d done nothing
wrong, Brett thought it was a very good sign that was the first thing out of
his mouth. Brett backed away and let Marty run the show. It was his club, and
he had a lot of experience dealing with people in all parts of the scene. Brett
just filled in when needed. He lingered long enough to hear Marty’s answer.

“I
think she will be,” Marty said.

Brett
looked over, and Evan and Starlight were talking to her, and she was even
smiling. Enough of taking care of other people’s problems; he wanted to look
for Katrina and have a nice long discussion with her of the same sort he’d
recommended to Archie. Hopefully he’d earned her trust enough that she’d be
honest with him.

WHEN KATRINA HAD gone to the club in LA, she’d never been
looking for any sort of relationship.
She’d always assumed that when she got
another boyfriend, it would be a vanilla affair, possibly dull in bed but
reliable outside it. The fact was that while she acted respectfully toward
doms
, she didn’t really respect them. She’d always figured
there was something a bit wrong with a man who insisted on having people call
him Sir or Master.
Some inner insecurity that they needed to
compensate for.
She accepted her needs, mostly—well, not always, because
liking having someone whack her didn’t seem totally right either—but she’d
always regarded
doms
as being slightly sick. Hell,
she wasn’t even sure about herself sometimes.

Brett
didn’t strike her as sick, and if he was insecure in any way, she didn’t know
what it was. So she had to walk to clear her head.

There
were a lot of women wearing corsets in the club, she noticed. More than in
LA,
and not mostly leather ones either but silk. The redhead
at the greeter desk had been wearing one. The purple-haired girl had one on now
too in a shade that matched her hair perfectly. Glenda had been wearing an orange-and-brown
one that was very similar, and it made her breasts look huge. The rest of her
wasn’t small, and the corset didn’t give her an hourglass figure by any means,
but Kat suspected most men would be transfixed by the two big globes of flesh
it pushed up. Kat wondered what she’d look like in one, and what it would feel
like to have something so tight around her. Would it be like walking in
bondage?

She
buttoned up her blouse again, left the bathroom, and searched for Brett. He
looked like he was about to get in a fight. She moved closer to get a better
view and felt vaguely disappointed when things settled down. Then she was
disappointed in herself for her reaction. She had no doubt Brett would win. She
had wanted to see him in action, watch those muscles straining. But still, a
fight wouldn’t be a good thing.

Watching him punch
Angus would be even nicer
. She pushed the thought out of her mind. He was three
thousand miles away. He’d gotten to her, and she hated it. He was such a
controlling jerk. She didn’t want to think about him.

She
turned away, wanting to retrieve her pants, and bumped into a blonde who was
wearing another silk corset. She had a collar on her neck too, and the collar
was made out of leather. At a concert Kat would have assumed it was just a
fashion accessory, but here it probably signified that she belonged to someone.

“Sorry!”
Kat said.

“That’s
fine, sis,” said the woman.

Sis?
Kat let it slide,
because she was more curious about the corset. “Mind if I ask you where you got
the corset?”

“Oh,
that’s easy,” said the blonde and pointed across the room. “His name’s Brett.
I’m Jessica, by the way.”

“Katrina,”
said Kat automatically. She looked over with a sinking feeling in her stomach,
hoping that she wasn’t pointing right at
her
Brett. But she was.

“How
do you feel about your Dom playing with other women?” she blurted before she
could stop. She’d never gotten how some women put up with that.

The
blonde looked confused for a moment and then frowned. “Oh! Have you been with
Master?
Hmm.
I guess I see it as one of the ways I
show my submission.” Kat got the feeling the blonde was trying to sound
enthusiastic but wasn’t. Or maybe she was. Kat couldn’t try to figure it out
anymore, because her cheeks were burning. She’d been thinking of Brett as
something different, and maybe he was, but not in the way she’d been thinking.
Whether his sub liked it or not, Kat wasn’t the sharing kind, especially not
now that she actually had the first hint of feeling for the man. Angus’s
notions about “open relationships” was
one of the many
reasons they weren’t together anymore.
If it worked for some
people, great.
It didn’t work for her.